Infallibility of Shadows
by kerricarri
Summary: They've not been children since the day Asuma dies. But when they are with each other their minds cast back to those days, peeling back year after year until they stop at day zero of their memories. The day they are reborn as shinobi but die as a team.


Tribute fic to Asuma exploring the breakdown of his team after he has long gone.

Done in Shikamaru's pov after he has garnered a formidable reputation, he realizes he can't quite grasp the reality he has already accepted and he finds that apathy from consecutive tragedies have warped him into something he is not.

* * *

Today is the anniversary of Sarutobi's death. The Hokage, not their teacher. Not Asuma-sensei.

_You're so smart...and have great sense as a shinobi. You could definitely become Hokage. But you're too lazy..._

_You'd probably hate it._

Absently thumbing open a new pack, he pulls out a new cancer stick, already imaging distant harpy calls of old.

"_Are you stupid or—or something?! Don't breathe that into my face!"_

He no longer remembers who it was said to—him or their late teacher?

It doesn't matter anyway. The speaker is dead now. For weeks, it's MIA. Officially. Unofficially, though, whispers are hissed in the corridors, suggesting that...she...

Never once for a second does he not curl lips at the thought of her supposed betrayal. A spy? That old hag? Never. For the last months of her life, she hasn't been leaking covert information. For the last _days_ of her life, she hasn't been cavorting with terrorists. She is not the traitor rumors have made her out to be, the one helping to secrete a plot against the Hokage, helping to conspire against her country.

She's still out there, they say. But he prefers to think she's dead.

It's better to remember her in the context of a smiling, freshly scented day. It's better this way, to not think of the alternatives. It's better that she's dead and not alive and out there—suffering. Being tortured, dying in a creek. With flowers.

But he knows better not to delude himself with fanciful imagery. A slither of smoke, and he breathes some more.

She probably is dead. And her death must've been a painful one. Too painful to visualize, but his treacherous mind works in degrees of probability.

There are too many ways to die where her mission has crashed into failure, after all.

Ame is not known to be kind. Not with their deliriums of God.

Today is the anniversary of Sarutobi's death. The Hokage, not their teacher. Not Asuma-sensei.

His best friend dies the last day they are together as _a_ _team_ for the first time after Asuma's death.

It is a solemn affair, a somewhat uncomfortable reunion. Not because they have long parted _ways—_which they have—but because they are their own leaders now, and have been ever since they've become jounin, ever since they've decided never to be vulnerable again. Each has passed, failed, and led genin teams.

They've not been children since the day Asuma dies. But when they are with each other, their minds cast back to those days, peeling back year after year until their memories stop at day one of their lives. Because the shinobi life only ever truly starts for them that day, that night. It starts with the day marked _zero_ in their minds.

The offspring of three legends, renewing their fathers' legacy. They cannot fail. They will succeed.

They are legendary.

And yet they are children. They are awkward teenagers teetering between independence and fallibility. When genin are young, they believe they are invincible. They believe nothing can touch them, that the shinobi life is that vague reward to work up towards. Moving up the ladder, so to speak.

The ultimate sacrifice is your life. You are in glorious service to the Hokage, to the village. You are special.

But the truth is the world doesn't give two shits about them. Children genin are not invincible, they are not immortal. They are not special, simpleminded tools shaped and molded to whatever current philosophy has taken hold of their villages.

For Konoha, it is the Will of Fire. It protects them from their own minds. It keeps them sane, this irrational thought of theirs. They hold onto, _cling_ to, die for it.

Children genin are not invincible. They are fallible, so fragile. They will die. The ones who live?

They survive.

For many, the day, month, _year_ a child genin has transformed from a student into a chunnin, that time marks strongly in his mind. It is a monumental date, whether you succeed or fail or not. If the latest chunnin exams don't jar a failure, naïve fool awake, its aftermath will.

The journey after becoming a chunnin. The survivors live through this.

But, ah. Fallibility. The ones who don't make it through the process, hierarchy, _system_ inevitably realize they are not infallible. Whether they fail or succeed, pass that vital step.

That regular misstep before becoming a jounin, not quite there yet too advanced, too _experienced_, to be a regular chunnin, is that awkward stage.

When Team 10 regroup and form and renew a legend, they realize they feel like children still. It is an uncomfortable thought. They don't like to acknowledge it, much less to each other. Suddenly, _suddenly_, they are not the strong men and women of Konoha. They are not the shinobi they have built themselves up to be as they have for the last some decades. It is an abrupt throwback to those painful days of negative integer dates. And they don't like it.

_Because childhood adolescence is so painfully sweet you don't want to look away_.

Blissful, infallible ignorance.

It will suck you in, push you through torrents of memories, until you are not quite sure what is past and what is present.

Ino has long moved on. She has thrashed and leapt and _purged_ through the years like lacy petals ripped to shreds. She affects nonchalance and brutal pragmatism when she is with the team.

"_It's what the geezers on top want with us. Our daddies are dead; of course they want to whore us out as the new competition. Don't scowl at me. It's not my fault we're back together again."_

The scowling, surprisingly, has come from Chouji and not himself. Or maybe it's not so surprising. He is lazily passive, after all. No use chiding her for the truth.

But her expression is a little _too_ casual, her eyes a little _too_ caustic. What surprises him more is not that his best friend is angered by Ino's caustic tone, but that his best friend beat _him_ to it.

"_...Not everyone is denying who they are."_

He's said it in a murmur, a subtly accusing tone. Is this the face of anger? So tempered. But Chouji has long become more and more like his papa. He chooses to abandon anger and fervor in place of careful, delicate steps. But he will not hesitate to rise when the occasion calls for it.

Any thoughts of his best friend being forever changed _dies_ when he sees Chouji destroy an enemy for the first time. Not kill, not assassinate, not _murder—_destroy. Sheer brutality that is expected of his sheer girth and form, but bellies his gentle nature.

Chouji, unlike Ino, has not been busy forgetting about the past. He holds those negative integers up to an ideal.

He's wanted them back together again for some time now.

They've long parted ways. It's called duty, it's called life. It's called becoming so jaded, stripped of so much innocence, nativity, _blissful, infallible ignorance_ that it's uncomfortable to call each other friends.

Much less teammates. Much less teammates turned friends turned associates after the number _zero_.

Ino has long moved on. Chouji has long become more and more like his papa.

They don't recognize each other anymore. They pass each other in the street because of a series of pulverized wounds admitting him into the hospital or the vaguely distant wave from an absentminded kunoichi too busy on the medical staff.

Oh. So they don't pass each other in the street, after all.

And this is only between Chouji and Ino. They see more of each other than they do of him, together, combined.

He is the shadow king of Konoha, an apt nickname. But not a nickname at all. Nicknames are supposed to be friendly, amicable things born from people on first name terms.

He got his by destroying Akatsuki.

Not all by himself, mind you. He hazily recalls there was a lot of yelling and screaming and demonic chakra'd appendages going around and around while a bright, blue eyed, golden haired boy...

Who is alive, surprisingly. Alive and well. Well, not _well_.

But the village pariah is not the subject of this tale. Is this supposed to be a story? Demeaned into a children's bedtime fairytale?

Kyuubi does not magically turn into a fairy godmother, after all. That demon is not used to harness the power of gods, of demons, of outer realms far from here.

But to earn his name of puppet king, he has turned the village pariah into a tool. He has turned the monster into a fairy godmother...come to save them all.

It is ultimate irony: Without blue eyed, brash, innocent Uzumaki Naruto, the village would have been razed to hell.

Of course he knows this when he plans Akatsuki's demise. Ever since Asuma's death, he's enjoyed his fair share of ironies.

And this is one of them. One of many...many...attributed to his name, attached to his reputation, accounted in his entry in the Bingo Book...

He is the shadow king of Konoha, an apt nickname. When Uzumaki Naruto finds out he's been manipulated since Jirayai's _died,_ since the grieving, angry boy came to _himself_ for guidance, help, light...

He is called the shadow king for a reason. Not only because he controls the inky darkness of the world around them, but because he is no one's guiding light and Naruto should have known that.

The scar blazed on his chest is a blinding mark by one enraged Jinchuriki when he finds out his orchestrated part in the whole ordeal.

Apology is not needed. Only a single despairing gaze, exchanged between the two, tells of the depth of their friendship.

For that, Uzumaki Naruto leaves him alone. And he is glad; he does not want to deal with a bright eyed, fair-haired child who has never really grown up.

To this day, he is sure the demon host does not forgive him for jarring his wakefulness to the world.

The shadow king is a changed man, a damaged man, and he has finally let Naruto see it.

For the latter, it is a repeat episode of a teammate's betrayal from his youth—a boy of black hair and accursed eyes...it is just the same, just as irrevocable and just as inexcusable.

No. There is no reason for Uzumaki Naruto not to hate him, after all.

Of course the shadow king knows this. Of course he knows he has hurt Naruto.

It is no longer his concern.

Not even when the sixth most ancient ceremony of the village takes place, and Naruto is not up there in the sky. But that is to come later when rifts grow and the only bonds that tether him to the ground are his friends.

...Friends?

Chouji and Ino see more of each other than they do of him, together, combined.

He is remarkably elusive when he wants to be even when everyone knows his priorities are skewed.

He is infamous for borrowing the roof of the hidden _Anbu_ headquarters, after all. For what else? It is said each jounin turns eccentric because of a defense mechanism for his mind; people just happen to crack more frequently on the job than not. His only happens to reflect the hobbies of his genin, fallible days. His sheer audacity has much to do with the impression he makes on the new blood circulating in the assassination squads.

Not because of his blatant infraction to an unsaid taboos, but because he is able to do it and _get away with it_. To anybody's recent recollection, he has never been anything but a jounin.

A plain, nondescript building. It is not camouflaged, it is not of a cliché washed out gray color. It is simply _there_. Its ingenious and clever design lies in human consciousness, the very nature of human beings: You see what you see. There is nothing to see. Before he ever has made the roof his home, Anbu and select jounin do not jump over this building at all. It is a taboo.

When he breaks that taboo, and stretches out arms wide, he does so with a yawn.

Nobody even thinks to order him off of government property. Remember, the Anbu don't exist? But more than that, he isn't doing anything but just...lying there. Gazing, heavy lidded eyes half way closed. He looks to the skies.

They figure it's best to leave the genius to his own devices. It is Konoha's genii policy at its finest.

They should have known better than to leave him alone.

Meanwhile, Chouji searches for him in vain...chasing after his errant back—he's not deserving of such a devoted friend. The only shinobi of their three-man cell who bothers to call them a team anymore. The team of old, not this makeshift, slapdash, glorification of their generational selves.

However, Chouji doesn't sit beside him as he watches the sky. He waits on the edge of a rooftop twenty meters away, watching and sad. This is a pivotal detail because it ultimately means the shadow king is still alone, still left to thoughts left better alone...

Still, at least the Akimichi tries. This doesn't mean Chouji does this frequently, though. Jounin and clan obligations often carry the man away to never ending responsibilities until Chouji returns to that neighboring roof near the Anbu rooftop, only to find the shadow king long gone.

Chouji is the only one who can still see the genin in the king. He is not at all intimidated by the legend, the persona. Shrewed, yet kind, he sees past that. Kind, because Chouji lets him believe in the delusion that the Akimichi doesn't see past that, that the shadow king isn't as hallow as he makes himself out to be...

Chouji is the only one he still calls his friend.

He is the only one who cares. About that boy. About that genin boy, lost, left drowning in the depths of his adult self, his hardened shinobi self. The exterior that swallows him whole and dry, consumes him, _overwhelms_ him, until the legend is more than the man, until the man realizes how hallow it all is.

Chouji once confides something to him, an observation.

"_No one seems to realize why it is you're still watching clouds..."_

No one, indeed.

They all turn away from the shadow king. There is no twilight to conceal him.

But he refuses to turn away from the clouds.

One day, he decides to play along. _"Why do you think I still watch clouds, my friend?"_

Chouji takes awhile to answer. When he does, he does so quietly.

"_I don't think you do it to forget. Ino is consumed with taking over her deceased friend's place. It is her way of grieving. But you, you're taking a different path..."_

"_What is my path?"_

"_The route you're taking is...hurting you."_

The shadow king stares at his friend bleakly, but his face is as blank as always.

Chouji says to him that day,

"_You're going to destroy yourself. You're already self-destructing."_

The day his best friend dies is the last day they are together as a team.

It is the day Ino cries for the last time. She is not so nonchalant as she likes Chouji to believe.

It is too late.

She collapses at the base of his coffin and shatters the picture frame fixing his image in an eternal smile. No one stops her because it is her moment of grief, her final consummation and acceptance of all the death around her. Asuma, Inoichi—Sakura, _Chouji_...

No one stops her because _he_ won't let anyone near. He steps forward to rest a heavy gaze on his female teammate's back, and then to look towards his old friend in his coffin.

The wooden container is exceptionally large. And yet his old friend's girth rests comfortably within. For the first time, he is beautiful and comfortable within his own skin. It is this sight, this imagery, that seizes the shadow king's throat and makes him turn away.

Today is the anniversary of Sarutobi's death. The Hokage, not their teacher. Not Asuma-sensei.

Today, every one of his teammates is dead, although his personnel have never recovered Ino's body.

Today, he lays out on the roof of the Hokage tower and sighs. He has moved up in the world; he no longer borrows Anbu rooftops. His breath forms a visible acrid puff in the air and the smoke teasingly entwines shapes into the sky, meaningless or otherwise. Motifs, perhaps. They dissipate before he can see.

His ceremonial robes have increasingly become ruffled. Underneath, he wears black like his mentor has.

Today is the anniversary of Sarutobi's death. It is not long now before he has to make a pretty speech. It is a day of sacrifice, after all, a day Konoha had stood strong and was not beaten.

It is a trial by fire, after all, that sees a Konoha weather through a horrific invasion.

He still does not quite know what to say, how to pretty up and glorify his own country, men, and the unmeasurable sacrifice of their third and reverent Lord Hokage. But what of the other soldiers under his wing? What of the deaths committed that day? What of the Anbu, the jounin, the chunnin, and the genin? Even the genin! Especially the genin.

Especially...the genin.

Like a coy but cruel, haunting slithering snake, a memory entwines his thought of that day...of five hastily picked boys sent out on a suicide mission to retrieve a former friend and traitor. Of five hastily picked boys playing at the shinobi life, never quite realizing this isn't a fairytale or a game _until that day_ when each of them are nearly killed.

Of five hastily picked boys put under the command of one foolish, newblood chunnin.

A foolish chunnin who nearly sees his best friend die a too early death that day.

Sometimes, _sometimes_, he wishes he can lay here all day to look up at the clouds. Maybe those atmospheric wisps up in the sky won't disappear like the smoke has, like his life has. Maybe, just maybe, he can stop the memories that teasingly touch the corners of his mind, flitting away. Coming and going as they please—how troublesome. How utterly troublesome.

The Sarutobi burial grounds. He has not visited there since that day, when Asuma dies. He sees slick platinum hair and a three pronged scythe, and thinks, this isn't so bad. This remembering. It doesn't hurt much anymore. It hasn't, not really, for years.

Teasing, flitting...

He does not attend the funeral because he _can_. He doesn't want to see his teacher go through his second death. Instead, he goes around the village and tips back his head to soak in the essence of Konoha. It is the only thing keeping him grounded, keeping him sane.

But everything is the same. The world does not stop even as it drips in monochrome grays. It is the day that changes everything, sending him into a torpor of existence. Existing is easy because it takes very little thought to just _live_, but he's not truly living. Not really.

And, however morbid and egotistical the thought, he thinks he is truly alone. No, he knows so. Without a doubt, he is alone.

Nearby, the veil of a hat sways.

So what of sacrifice and glory? What of the noble standards set forth for all new shinobi blood, all eager men and women willing to throw themselves at the feet of their Hokage?

Suddenly, he realizes he has forgotten his speech. The speech set forth by the village council, _make Sarutobi's death noble_, doesn't quite appeal to him anymore. Because Sarutobi's death has always been noble, has always been right. Sacrifice leading to peace, peace leading to complaceny and forgetfulness until there is no more remembering, no reverence, until there is nothing left but rampent ignorance of a new generation weaned off old, sordid tales reduced to bedtimes stories...

There is a vague thought in his head that wants to scream and shout at all these people, these strangers who are his people and yet not the familiar people of his youth, villagers of his era. Because his era is a dead era.

His era is no more.

This is the time of the puppet king. Shadows, no more.

He closes his eyes the moment feet stop, respectfully, at his head. The shinobi kneels, a sign of deference that says the man does not want to tower above his Hokage.

But Shikamaru no longer cares anymore. Admittedly, it has bothered him more than it should've in the past, but that's only because no one quite seems to know how to acknowledge a leader who lays erect on the ground. No one quite knows what to do when Shikamaru only closes eyes and settles onto his back even more. No one knows quite how to part trying news to the man when he watches the messenger with slightly distant eyes.

When he wants to smoke, he wants to see it. He's not a vain man, of course, but he likes to see swirling, dancing twirls as they breathe from his mouth, escaping into the air. He wants to see it, every breath, every puff, every dying strand of smoke as they twist and twine and try with futile effort to join with the clouds up high.

The magnificent hat is in the way.

Now, with a subordinate so near, he slowly grinds the butt end of the cigarette and he hears its dying hiss in the air. He sits up and reaches for the hat that is in reach. The veil that settles around his face is heavy, and the low brim narrows the focus of his sight, his field of vision, until his absentminded gaze has fled in the face of his intensity, this garb he wears. He eventually stands, and the hat only traps in that localized regality.

The shinobi kneeling behind him does not say a word.

He remembers the ceremony that made him king, the break of day that dragged him from the background and into the foreground. He is out of sorts. He is unfocused yet disillusioned. He is in grief, but he does not tell them that. It is his duty, maybe even his calling. He has to keep telling himself that else he'll float away. And he doesn't want that, he doesn't want to unlive. He doesn't want to fade.

_Or does he_?

So he takes the job. He accepts this bondage for what it really is, a trite measure to tether him down. A forceful bond—but nobody thinks of it like that, nobody sees what he sees, nobody _realizes_ why the laziest candidate has taken the job...

He thinks it is enough, to keep him from dissipating, from floating away. He can't fly now, can he? He's not willing to go against his principles and betray the village if he leaves now. So he won't. It is an excellent plan. It is keeping him grounded. It is enough.

But everything good, every willing tether that had formally clawed and latched onto his being, has gone. There are no more harpy shrieks in his ear, no much happy sounds of munching at his side. They are children no more, he knows. He knows this, but why can't he let go?

He doesn't want to accept the present day, the reality of it all. He doesn't want to think he's dead, and he doesn't want to think _she's_ dead either.

They are all wearing a foreign face. They are confused chunnin no longer. Ino no longer screams, Chouji no longer eats. It's fact, they're gone, those children of his. Even before the shinobi life has brutally taken them away, they were gone.

Asuma, he thinks, is fortunate to have died, fortunate he's buried deep within the ground. Lucky to not have seen what Shikamaru sees.

Up high on his pedestal, he wonders why he can't reach the sky anymore. He can't even touch it.

Has he ever?

* * *

Wrote a similar postseries AU for Team 8, but this was considerably more grounded in canon.

It has a bit of the philosophies you'd find in fandom, but I wrote it on a whim to see what a postseries Hokage would be like that doesn't happen to be Naruto. That aspect of the fic really doesn't make much of an impact, though, as the whole pov is largely introspective, the half wistful musings of an apathetic Hokage.

Hope this was enjoyed, and reviews are appreciated, but mostly I wrote this because of how well directed Asuma's death was in the episodes and how his death was felt keenly by all.


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